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MORE than 300 garment workers have been infected with coronavirus in Sri Lanka.
The Health Ministry identified 321 cases in a “factory cluster” from the outskirts of the capital Colombo.
The government has imposed a curfew on two suburbs where the majority of the patients live, closed schools and universities and imposed restrictions on public transport, but the case highlights the role of lax labour regulations in driving up infection rates.
So far Sri Lanka has avoided the catastrophic incidence of coronavirus in neighbouring India, which registered a further 61,267 new cases in the last 24 hours alone — 40 times Sri Lanka’s cumulative total. More than 100,000 Indians have died from the virus, the third-highest total on Earth.
India’s Narendra Modi government and many of its state governments have responded to the economic impact of Covid-19 by lifting or deregulating labour laws in moves that have led to “more conflicts and [an] increase [in] slavery,” according to People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights convener Lenin Raghuvanshi.
